In the final post of the previous blog series “History of Light Sources - Color Rendering Index (CRI)”, entitled “The Pursuit for Quality of Light - Beyond CRI”, Nichia introduced lighting that supports senior citizens by making their lives enriched and more comfortable. The brand-new Clear White color LED is essential to HCL, defined as “lighting that supports a richer and more comfortable life through the effects of light.” In this post, Nichia once again would like to talk about the importance of the light in people's lives.

Year after year, the average lifespan has been increasing, and many people are trying to find ways to happily spend their lives after retirement. Recent studies have shown that over the course of a long life, people see different shades of color once they get older than when they are younger. The cause of that is the lens of the eye. The lens, which functions as a reflective lens to project what is seen onto the retina at the back of the eyeball, becomes more yellowish with age, causing senior citizens to see things with yellowish tints, with no clear contrast, and with blurred vision. Since the human brain has a compensation function, people might not be aware of it; however, the inability to see things clearly does not just make text hard to read, but it can also make food look unappetizing. There is also a concern that by being less sensitive to external stimuli, the brain becomes not as active as before, causing people to have lower energy.

Nichia, as a company that specializes with light, has been exploring ways to contribute to enriching senior citizen’s lives with light. LEDs can produce a variety of light by combining blue light-emitting diodes and phosphors that have different light components.

By taking advantage of this feature of LEDs and optimizing the light, Nichia hopes to enable senior citizens to recapture the sensations of “reading letters” and “enjoying a delicious meal,” so that they can experience even more joyful moments over their long lifetime.

This is why the Clear White color LED was created. Nichia developed this LED based on the idea that since yellowish eye lenses prevent people from having a clear view, it would be better to create light with a reduced yellow component. However, yellow light has a high contribution to the LED luminous efficiency, therefore, reducing the yellow light would typically result in a significantly dimmer LED. However, with its advanced phosphor technology, Nichia created an LED with a low yellow component while minimizing the loss of luminous efficiency. When Nichia asked people from various ethnic groups around the world to compare the Clear White color LED and regular white light, almost all of them agreed that the Clear White color LED was brighter, and it helped them read text and see photos more clearly.

Nichia will continue to develop LEDs that illuminate spaces brightly with less energy and support human health and happiness.

In the next post, Nichia would like to introduce LEDs that support keeping places clean.

For more information about the products, refer to Nichia’s website.
Clear White color LED